Reforming the Remedy: Getting the Right Remedial Structure to Protect Personal Privacy

Abstract

Politicians, journalists and academics have exhausted many hours over the last decade debating the question of whether Australia should have a statutory cause of action for invasion of personal privacy. In the midst of this ongoing debate, a simple question has often been overlooked: what remedies should be available to a person whose privacy been breached? In posing and answering that question, it is argued that a wide range of remedies for intrusions of personal privacy should be available to the courts. Perhaps most controversially, the author asserts that exemplary damages, which aim to punish defendants and deter future breaches of the law, should be available for the most heinous breaches of personal privacy.